The South Korean version of OKEx will be dropping five “privacy coins” as of October 10th.
Monero, Dash, Zcash, and two others will be delisted from the platform in order to comply with regulations, according to a recent press release from the company.
Users will have until December 10th to get their affected funds out of the exchange, according to a Google translation of the post.
“OKEx Korea will always do our best for your safe trading and healthy exchange operation.”
The post insinuates that the exchange is not able to collect enough information about a given transaction in order to comply with regulations.
Privacy Coins No Longer Legal?
Existing regulations in Korea demand that certain identifying features be available to institutions such as exchanges.
Accordingly, privacy coins make compliance impossible, so OKEx has made the decision to simply end support for several cryptocurrencies, at least on its Korean platform.
Whether other Korean exchanges, like Bithumb, follow suit remains to be seen.
While regulators often cite a lack of strong laws or resources to enforce them, regulations nevertheless play a significant role in the behavior of people towards cryptocurrency.
Some countries, like Malta and Estonia, have seized the opportunity to create a “home” for cryptocurrencies.
Others, like France, have worked to build a suitable regulatory framework that’s welcoming while still affording the authorities the power to oversee a new industry.
Still other countries have outright banned trading, such as China, which, as a country, once had a significant lead in all things blockchain.
Asia’s Privacy Coin Regime Is Changing
The country is still home to one of the largest Bitcoin companies in the world, Bitmain, who produce most of the world’s Bitcoin mining equipment.
Major Chinese exchanges, like Binance, moved away from the country when it announced its new, narrow regulations years back.
Korean trading has played no small part in the life of cryptocurrency markets, but stronger regulations have been some time coming around the world.
Crypto trading is only one vital part of the crypto economy. With or without it, mass adoption is possible.
People don’t necessarily need the ability or even freedom to trade cryptocurrencies in order to make use of blockchain technology.
The ability to eventually get crypto into fiat cash is important. The role of Bitcoin ATMs, and easy retail companies like Coinbase, cannot be understated.
That notwithstanding, every easy-to-use platform that comes to market will come with it a new bit of government intrusion that we didn’t have before.
Now, in the case of Korea, we see that the government only wants trading of coins it can conceivably track.
Other exchanges and jurisdictions could follow suit.
The eventual outcome? No liquidity for several privacy coins.
Is that the future for Monero and Zcash?
Likely their big holders hope against as much, but the rest of the crypto world should take note of the example as well. The very thing that could make these cryptos very hard to use is the thing that should, in theory, make them valuable.
